


Catabolysis

by coldcobalt



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: 1970s, Class Differences, M/M, Pre-Roche, dan tries his best but can still be an asshole sometimes dot txt, food as a metaphor, rugelach as a plot device
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 10:09:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18892495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldcobalt/pseuds/coldcobalt
Summary: “Not necessary. Will eat at home.”A thought sinks in, horrible in its clarity.“Do youhavefood at home?”Dan contemplates poverty.





	Catabolysis

“The whole Rastelli case’ll sort itself out.” Nite Owl says, closing his cowl with a snap. It’s early evening and spitting rain, and he’s thankful that the night’s patrol is slated to be tunnel-heavy. “Guy couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag.”

There’s a crinkling noise from next to the refrigerator. Rorschach’s mask is rucked up to his nose and he’s eating shredded cheese from the bag by the fistful and—okay, that’s pretty gross. Nite Owl catches a glimpse of his ungloved hands (unwashed, inexplicably covered in roofing tar, one knuckle split) and makes a mental note to throw the whole thing out.

“Jesus, stop that. Let me fry you an egg or something.”

Silence, some wet chewing noises. Rorschach takes one more massive handful and zips the bag shut with a motion far too tightly-wound for its simplicity.

 _Embarrassment_ , Nite Owl realizes, and he suddenly sees the pockets of shadow around his partner’s wrists, the hollows of his cheeks under the latex sheen of the mask. The sharp pull of hunger present in every line of his body.

“Not necessary. Will eat at home.”

A thought sinks in, horrible in its clarity.

“Do you _have_ food at home?" 

\-----

It’s 1972, and their partnership is just the wrong side of souring: a nervous energy without a name arcing between them during silent city vigils. There’s a new sharpness to Rorschach that Dan doesn’t like, a live wire crackling dangerously over dark waters. It’s like Rorschach suddenly can’t stand to be next to him.

But as tightly wound and incrementally erratic as he’s becoming, Rorschach is still his partner, and they still work better together than alone.

Dan has tried to guess at Rorschach’s living situation over the years: an SRO if his partner’s fastidious minimalism is anything to go by; a tiny room tucked into some nondescript building in a rough-edged neighborhood. He’d always imagined it was by choice. But now, Dan pictures his fridge empty, his cupboards bare save for things grabbed in haste from newsstands, pulled from clearance bins, liberated with implicit permission from the Nest—and he doesn’t like this train of thought _at all._

His partner tugs on one glove after another, leather creaking.

“Ready when you are,” Rorschach growls. He throws open the door to the basement, tails of his trench fluttering in the encroaching dark.

 -----

Over the next few patrols, the picture of Rorschach’s home life begins to solidify. The realization does not become any more comfortable.  
Dan wants to kick himself, because the signs were always there, he just didn’t _think—_

Nite Owl watches Rorschach devour sugar cube after sugar cube under sputtering neon; ketchup packets, other unidentifiable bites of not-food. Sees him eye the dumpsters behind supermarkets with singular focus.

(How many thousands of calories do they burn every night, scaling buildings and dodging bullets? How many are actually being replaced?)

 _Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,_ Dan thinks, morbidly, and tears his eyes away.

\-----

Dawn boils over the horizon, sunlight filtering through Archie’s windows. The city is an unfurled map below them.

“You’re staring”, Rorschach says. “Stop it.”

They’re both loose-limbed and sore after a five-person brawl, a drug deal intercepted—small stuff, but worrying. The supervillain antics of the sixties are long gone, and the tongue-in-cheek high-but-not-high stakes with them. These new criminals don’t want rivals or a narrative arc, don't have gimmicks or gadgets or to be thwarted. Now, all the criminals have guns.

“You seem tired.” Dan says. It’s too much to say anything else. He eases up on the throttle, letting the ship hang in the early-morning air.

Rorschach leans back in the copilot’s chair, almost imperceptibly. For someone so tightly-reined, it’s a sprawl. The rising sun catches his mask-covered temples, highlights the trails of grime caked into his trenchcoat.

(There have been some worrying hygiene slips lately: body odor, occasional patches of dirt streaked up the stubble-rough sides of Rorschach’s jaw. His breath smells so bad that Dan can hardly stand to talk to him. They’re doing less of that, nowadays.)

Rorschach makes a subverbal noise, shrugs his shoulders in a blink-and-miss-it gesture. Tired doesn’t seem a strong enough word, really.

Dan tries very hard not to think of—

\-----    

_Sirens, blood on his teeth, the glimpse of a handgun flashing under staccato streetlights._

_He sees it._ Nite Owl thinks, grappling with a topknot barely out of his teens _he has to._ The kid goes down with a sweep of his leg and stays there, groaning. The muted red glow of a neon sign flickers on high overhead, a Fujianese advertisement for the restaurant around the corner.

Across the alley, Rorschach ducks, feints, uppercuts a topknot with exacting precision. His mask seems to float in the gloom, a phantom in the dark. But even at a distance, it’s clear his brawling’s less focused than usual; his normally crisp punches are muddied and sluggish

The topknot rocks back onto his heels from the force of the blow; Rorschach draws back in response and his jab is so telegraphed it’s practically useless. Something is wrong, wrong.

Nite Owl disarms the other katiehead with a swift punch to the gut, rips the knife out of her hand before she can do any damage with it, zip-ties her hands behind her back with a fluid motion.

Rorschach’s punch swings wide, overextended into empty air as his opponent pivots. He stumbles, pinstripes flaring white in the neon haze and the katiehead raises both hands together cold steel glinting. Rorschach’s mask is the only thing visible in the pool of shadow.

The gun’s barrel is suddenly close, too close, a hand’s breadth away from the latex-covered temple, steel a refracted red in the half-light. Blood roars in Nite Owl’s ears: his pulse, the ocean, the world has turned to reddened water --

 _Rorschach!_ He yells, tide rising to drown him and the katiehead—

pulls—

The trigger.

A click, then nothing. Out of bullets.

Rorschach snaps to awareness then _snarls_ , an inhuman sound, and rips the weapon from the would-be murderer’s grasping hands.

To the topknot, the gun is useless without ammo. In Rorschach’s skillful hands, it’s not useless at all.

\-----

“So, are we gonna talk about.” Dan’s throat is dry. He can’t quite shape the words on the tip of his tongue, so he settles for something less descriptive. “That.”

The blots whirl. “Got sloppy. Will be better.”

“Yeah, okay. That was way too close.” A visual again, dark steel against white latex, the hum of neon on the night air. Would have been a sure thing, if the topknot had kept a better eye on his ammo. It’s adrenaline (normal, post-fight jitters, nothing else) that makes Dan wrap both hands around the throttle to keep from shaking.

“Something’s been off for weeks now—" or months, or years, he doesn’t even know how to delineate the good from the bad anymore, just knows the rot is there and spreading -- “if there’s something going on with you, I need to know about it.”

Rorschach carefully avoids his eyes. His shoulders are ramrod straight, revealing nothing.

“Civilian stressors.” Something clicks in his throat, a dry swallow. “Some...financial concerns. Ultimately unimportant.”

Dan could just kill his partner, sometimes, if New York doesn’t do it for him.

“Look, I know about the food thing. I can— Let me give you—”

The Archimedes hovers just below the cloudline, humming softly. Dan pulls an industrial-size bag of trail mix from a wall compartment, a handful of granola bars, holds them out in offering to his partner.

And Rorschach is up on his feet, entire body coiled like a spring about to snap. The jut of his jaw is murderous.  
“Not interested” he spits, “in being a charity case.” He shoves the food back into Dan’s costumed chest with barely-controlled violence.

Sunlight cuts an angry swath across the floor.

“Okay.” Dan says. “Okay.” He tucks the food back into Archie’s interior panelling, forgotten.

\-----

They break up a kiddie porn ring in Inwood, some human trafficking in Flushing. They are saving the city in increments, thwarted crime by thwarted crime.

\-----

In the basement of the Nest, Dan tweaks a prototype schematic, chewing. Rorschach watches from the other side of the workbench, ignoring the orange clamshell of rugelach between them with deliberate focus.

“These cookies are for both of us. They’re from Zabar's, they’re good.”

Rorschach crosses his arms and looks away—it’s a childlike gesture, a bratty kid who won’t eat his vegetables.

(Dan has to bite back a bark of laughter: Rorschach as a kid is just too comedic of an image. He can only imagine what a stubborn little shit his partner must have been. His mother must have been a saint.)

“Can take care of myself.”

Dan eats another cookie out of spite.

\-----

Time passes. Dan’s pantry overflows with unstolen food.

\----- 

Feet shuffle on Dan’s doorstep. The spare key scrapes the inside of the lock with a violent rattle and Rorschach steps in, dripping with rain. No broken door frame tonight, thank god.

He’s all business, as always.

“Daniel. Brought research from home.” He pulls a comically large sheaf of papers from the inside of his trench, spreads them across the kitchen table with wild abandon. “Have identified potential gang stronghold: using IRT tunnels off abandoned City Hall station, not Eighteenth as previously thought.”

Rorschach gestures somewhere south of Fourteenth Street, map ringed in annotations in his completely illegible scrawl, diagrams and notations racing across the map in dizzying red whorls. “—would suggest a two-pronged approach, one northward, one westward. Cut their escape route before it can be utilized, then—”

A pause. “What are you doing.”

The question is rhetorical, if anything: the air is thick with the smell of paprika. The brisket comes out of the oven in a cloud of steam, juicy and perfect and Dan is no James Beard, but he makes do.

(Dan tries not to notice the way the inkblots track the movement of the tray, an alley mutt following a bone.)

The chair slides back with a metallic squeal and Rorschach stands, fury incarnate.  
“Told you. Don’t want your pity—”

“It’s not _pity_!” Dan shouts, and silence fills the room. The serving platter slams down with more force than strictly necessary.

This blowup is selfish and stupid and petty and Dan _knows _he’s being an asshole but he can’t let his resentment fester under his skin any longer; he will get it out or it will kill him—__

“I know you don’t want anyone poking around in your civilian life and I’ve respected that. Christ, for _years_ I’ve respected that— _ _”__

(He’s using the Nite Owl voice, he realizes, shouting loud enough for the whole row of brownstones to hear)

"So you don’t want a friend, you want a partner, okay. Want to corral yourself off in your little righteous bubble away from the rest of the world? Fine by me, pal.”

Two plates rattle onto the table, followed by silverware.

“But I am not. Going to watch you destroy yourself, starve yourself, get yourself killed over—over whatever this hangup is.”

A serving fork slams violently into the cut of meat.

“Now you are going to sit here,” Dan says, and he realizes he's shaking with singular fury, every nerve aflame, he’s never been so mad in his fucking life. “You’re going to sit here and _eat this goddamn brisket.”_

 

Across the table, his partner is still.

Dan takes the moment to compose himself, wipes the sweat off his brow with an unsteady hand, tucks down a few flyaway tendrils of hair. He probably looks like a madman. “Uh.”

“Hnk.” Rorschach scrubs at his mouth with the palm of his glove, a nervous habit from the early days of their partnership. A nailbiter’s tic, blocked by the mask. He rucks the latex up over his nose, wordlessly.

“Yeah,” Dan says. His limbs suddenly weigh a million pounds. “Yeah, me too.”  
He sinks into his chair, forks a slab of brisket onto his plate. Brushes his hair back with an unsteady hand.

“I can’t keep doing this, man. I can’t be the only one of us keeping this thing together.”

Another slice of brisket. Rorschach’s mouth is a bloodless line, his cheeks are hollow pits. Dan wonders what it feels like, to starve.

Even through the mask, Rorschach avoids meeting his eyes. "Not like you.”

“Heh. Soft? Sentimental?”

 _“Rich_." He spits the word like something condemnable. "Unable to make it up to you, financially.” An aborted gesture at the townhouse walls. “Any of this.”

Rorschach has helped Nite Owl out of manholes and alleyways; has pulled shrapnel out of the thin skin of Dan’s face. He’s let his partner lean on him for six unsteady city blocks when Nite Owl’s ankle gave out from an ill-timed fall. He’s been Nite Owl’s right-hand man in their underworld descents, ripped him safely from the city’s slavering jaws—

The debt has already been paid, a thousandfold.

 

“I don’t care.” Dan says, carefully. “I want to do this.” Somewhere in the city, a Fujianese sign sputters above an empty alleyway, red bleeding from its coils in fits. “I need you to let me.”

The pause stretches the length of the kitchen, of the brownstone, the silence heavy with the weight of seven years.

Finally, silently, Rorschach grasps the serving fork in his purple-gloved hand.

\-----

They eat silently. Rorschach has terrible table manners.

\----- 

 Post-patrol, Dan wakes up to a scuffling noise from downstairs. The clock by his bed reads 7:45 AM, an ungodly hour. He rolls over and falls back asleep.

Later, better-rested, he pads into the kitchen. He mentally steels himself for another round of rodent confrontation, he knew he should have set more traps. Crafty little bastards.

And then he stops, suddenly, doubled over in disbelieving laughter, because—

Because the fridge lies empty, bare and gleaming. The plastic containers full of leftovers have been whisked away without a trace.

**Author's Note:**

> I just binge-read the entire Ao3 back-catalogue of this pairing and everything hurts.
> 
> (Next fic will be smut, I swear)


End file.
